Celestia, Princess of the Dawn, Unifier of the Three Tribes, and Unquestioned Ruler of Ponykind, was not amused.

“What was the damage this time, Kibitz?” Celestia asked, hoof firmly planted in her face. As if mere darkness would blot out the pain of what she was hearing.

“Two city blocks will have to be dug up in order to remove all of the spray cheese from the sewer pipes,” replied Celestia’s normally unflappable aide, shuffling his papers. “We’ll need at least three mages to remove the translocation anchor from the armory so that the geese there can go home, and of course, there will be the cleanup afterwards.”

“Afterwards?” Celestia asked, in spite of herself.

“The geese were… rather distressed at being teleported from their ponds in the Royal Gardens to the armory,” answered the grey maned unicorn. “They did what geese tend to do in those circumstances, which they repeated each time they tried to leave the building only to be returned to their starting point.”

“How many times?” the princess asked, fearing the answer.

“According to my most current information… the cycle is still going on,” Kibitz stated, and Celestia felt a trill of fear go down her spine as the unicorn did something that she had never seen him do before. He gulped nervously.

“Kibitz, you know I have great faith and trust in you,” Celestia stated, looking her aide in the eyes and for the first time seeing actual fear there.

“Yes, Your Highness,” Kibitz replied, bowing low to break eye contact.

“You know that I would rather cut off my left hoof than do anything that would hurt the special relationship we have. Right?” Celestia asked, using that same hoof to lift Kibitz’s chin back up and feeling the trembling in the unicorn’s body through it.

“Please… “ begged the unicorn.

“Kibitz, just tell me what’s got you so frightened. You weren’t even scared when Night— “ Celestia paused, as a sudden thought came to her. “Oh no. Luna hasn’t—”

“Oh no! No Ma’am,” Kibitz assured her with sudden haste. “Princess Luna is still asleep and won’t be briefed until Night Court begins.”

“Then what’s got you so upset?” Celestia gently demanded.

“I left an item out of the report. A rather… delicate item,” the unicorn admitted, another nervous gulp passing down his throat.

“Kibitz…” Celestia said, raising an eyebrow.

“The statues of yourself and Luna in Celebration Square were magically animated during last night’s events,” Kibitz said, backing away slowly.

“Animated?” Celestia asked, one delicate eyebrow raising in curiosity. “Animated how?”

“Amorously,” Kibitz supplied, backing away even further as the aurora of his monarch’s mane began to shift to oranges and reds.

“What?” Celestia demanded, dark pupils in magenta eyes turning to flames.

“Your statues have been making love to each other since this morning,” Kibitz blurted out, running for the door as he did so. “Most of the press already have photos…”

Few people know that not only can marble burn, but that it will melt at around 1300 degrees celsius.

“Well,” Kibitz said, as he looked up at the cooling edges of the hole in the ceiling a few minutes later. “That could have gone worse.”

“And that’s the current situation, and what their Highnesses expect to be done with it,” Raven Inkwell was saying a few days later to an attractive white pegasus mare.

“Are you serious?” Iron Glamour demanded, eyebrows knitting in frustration. “You can’t just wave your hoof and make a problem go away. Especially not this problem.”

“Explain,” the dark maned earth pony replied blandly.

“We’re talking about reeling in some of the biggest names of Canterlot society, the nobility, and/or their children,” stated the pegasus, waving a toned white wing for emphasis. “Something like this would take… “

“Money?” prompted Inkwell.

“Yes!” shot back Iron Glamour.

“Infrastructure?”

“Yes!”

“Carte blanche?”

“Of course! Wait… what?” Glamour asked, caught off guard by the ready agreement of Celestia’s secretary to her demands.

“You have carte blanche, and essentially unlimited funding to, and I quote Princess Luna here,” Raven paused for a moment as she consulted her notes, “Ensure that these mendicants dance to the tune of law and order instead of the merry chaos they have until now.”

“Unlimited funding, and the blessings of both Luna and Celestia?” Glamour asked, wanting to be absolutely sure of what she was hearing.

“Her Solar Highness was ready to incinerate the group that engineered that ‘display’ they created in Celebration Square,” Raven stated, arching an eyebrow. “As far as she is concerned you are allowed to do anything you want to reform these ponies, short of death or maiming.”

“Why not simply throw them in jail?” Glamour asked, “Or exile them? I hear the moon is nice this time of year.”

“Jail means courts, which means lawyers and judges, and the ponies that need dealing with have enough lawyers to tie things up for years. In fact some of them already are in the court system, and it hasn’t slown them down at all,” Raven confided. “As for exile… These ponies can’t just be made to go away forever. They all have important parts to play, when they aren’t unleashing chaos in the form of drunken parties and pranking, that is.”

“You haven’t mentioned infrastructure,” Glamour noted. By this point she was relatively sure Raven had an answer for her but she absolutely wanted to be sure.

“You may purchase, rent, hire or otherwise obtain whatever you feel you need in order to get the job done,” Raven said, leaning a little forward to look Iron Glamour directly in her violet eyes. “Let me be clear. Their Royal Highnesses are granting you extraordinary powers in the hopes that you will be able to change these ponies from engines of chaos into forces for order.”

“Though to be honest, they’ll settle for not causing mayhem every other night,” Raven concluded. “What say you?”

“A few ideas come to mind,” Glamour answered, rubbing her chin with a hoof as she thought. “I can do anything I want to them?”

“They have to remain alive, physically intact, and sound enough in mind to be able to think, act and react when needed,” Raven clarified, smiling slightly as she saw Iron Glamour’s eyebrows raise in surprise. “Princess Luna is well aware of many of your less… genteel methods of persuasion.”

“And I’m being allowed to use them?” Iron Glamour’s eyebrows were practically in her mane by now.

“Not only allowed, but requested,” Raven confirmed, before giving a dark chuckle. “Apparently Princess Twilight has recently developed some ‘equipment’ refinements she would like to see field tested as well.”

“One last thing—” Glamour began, only to be stopped by an official looking piece of paper with the royal seal at the bottom. The document contained her name with space for many more.

“Blanket immunity. In advance. In writing,” Raven told her, with a smug look on her face. “Anything you do is legal. As long as you stay within the limits I’ve passed on to you.”

The lovely pegasus sat back on her haunches as her mind raced. There were a lot of ways to get the results that the princesses wanted, and as Raven Inkwell had pointed out, Iron Glamour not only knew those ways, she was being tasked with this because they knew she knew those ways. Not only that, but Luna and Celestia seemed to have already thought of, and preemptively put a stopper in pretty much any objection she might have to taking on the assignment.

“Okay, I’ll do it,” Iron Glamour stated, one corner of her mouth crooking up slightly as rough plans fell into place in her mind. “Are there any specific ponies the princesses want dealt with or do I get to choose?”

“Target list, in order of priority,” Raven replied, sliding over a scroll that had been sealed both physically and magically. “You are, of course, free to target the ponies on this list in any order you choose. This is just their Highnesses' preferences.”

“How long?” the pegasus asked, scooping up the scroll and standing up as she did so.

“It would be beneficial for the Crown to begin seeing results within a month, two at most,” Raven answered, standing up herself.

“One will be pushing it. I’ll need to get everything set up first, so two months is more likely,” Glamour replied, before walking out of the room.

“Well, this should be interesting,” Raven noted.

“...And that’s when I thought of you and your salle,” Glamour said to a kirin, a few days later.

“Let me see if I understand this correctly,” the kirin known as Winter Showers replied. “You plan on kidnapping—”

“Forcibly encouraging,” interrupted Iron Glamour, causing the tiniest of frowns to pass across a lovely blue face.

“Various ponies of both rank and status to my salle,” continued the kirin, “where they will be broken—”

“Rehabilitated,” interjected the pegasus, causing Winter to draw ice blue power to her horn.

“This review of your expectations would go much faster if you stopped interrupting me,” the kirin stated, her face taking on the air of a predator seeing potential prey. “I am quite prepared to muzzle and bridle you in order to prevent further interruptions.”

“I’d like to see you try,” Glamour growled back, a hoof edging toward one of her ever present weapons.

“Peace, my dear Glamour,” Winter Showers admonished, letting go of her magic and leaning back in her chair. “While I would dearly love to help you learn to be less… warlike, I was only teasing. I value our relationship too much to jeopardize it just to see you trained to dance to my tune.”

“‘Dancing to a tune’ is why I thought of you after I was told Princess Luna said something along those lines as well,” Glamour replied, relaxing slightly.

“Whatever do you mean?” Winter asked coyly.

“I’m not talking about your dance studio. I’m talking about what goes on in the basement. I’ve seen you turn obstinate stallions into doormats after a few ‘sessions’ down there,” Glamour stated. “ I’ve watched mares come through your door begging for your touch, so don’t tell me you don’t know how to change a pony from one thing into another.”

Seconds of silence passed as Winter Showers absorbed the fighting mare’s diatribe, right before she locked a tight fitting silver shackle to Iron Glamour’s rear left fetlock with a single snap of her magic that triggered an instant and violent response from the pegasus.

Winter Showers barely saw her companion move before the table between them practically disappeared and she found herself slammed to the floor with a “whuff” of escaping air, her throat imprisoned between a pair of dark metal blades that were poised to decapitate her in an instant.

“Take. It. Off,” growled Iron Glamour, fury in her eyes and fire in her heart.

“Of course,” the kirin reasonably replied, seemingly undisturbed by her very vulnerable position. “But one question before I do so, if I may?”

“One,” snarled Glamour, the pressure of the cuff on her rear leg fueling her anger.

“Why did you react like that just now?” asked Winter Showers.

“Are you crazy? You know why,” the pegasus replied, surprised by the question and glancing around to make sure it wasn’t some sort of trick to distract her from another attack. “I’m a warrior, a fighter. I’m never going to just roll over because somepony tries to put me in chains. EVER. Now, take it off.”

“Of course,” Winter Showers repeated, unlocking the cuff and letting it drop away. “But why do you think any of the ponies that the Crown wants dealt with are going to react any differently than you have, just now?”

Iron Glamour blinked as if someone had just hit her between the eyes. Of all the questions Winter Showers could have asked her, she definitely hadn’t been expecting that one.

“Are you shitting me?” Glamour asked, getting up and off of the kirin beneath her. “I know what you can do to ponies. Like I said, I’ve seen you change a stallion from being a proud and tough member of the Royal Guard into a pony who literally begs you, BEGS YOU, to whip him. I’ve seen mares crawl across this very floor, demanding that you bridle them and harness them to a carriage so that they can pull you around.”

“If you can get a pony to do things like that, you sure as hell can get them to stop drinking and fighting and wrecking half of Canterlot every week,” Iron Glamour finished, annoyance in her voice.

“My dear Iron Glamour,” sighed Winter Showers in a patient voice as she got up off the floor and onto a chair. “I can do those things like that to ponies because they want them from me even before they cross my threshold. Their focus is already on submitting to me, or wearing my chains, feeling the sting of my lash, or treating my every word like it came from the mouth of Celestia herself, even before I lay eyes on them.”

“Fuck,” was Iron Glamour’s reply, shoulders slumping as she realized she’d made an assumption that didn’t match the reality. “Sorry Winter, I really thought you were the pony for the job.”

“I’m flattered you thought of me in the first place,” Winter Showers assured the pegasus. “But you can’t change a pony on that deep of a level through force alone, at least not permanently. Unless you change their core focus, they will always revert to what they were and the behaviors that come with them. It’s not like any of those brats are ballerinas.”

“Wait, what?” Iron Glamour asked. Winter’s words had unknowingly tapped something in her tactical mind. Something that had her train of thought starting down an alternate track.

“A ballerina requires dedication, training, and focus under a demanding instructor in order to bring out their best,” Winter replied, gesturing toward the ballet barre that stretched along the mirrored wall of the salon. “Many of the disciplines I use for my ballet students carry over to the submissives who join me after the school closes for the day. I do so enjoy both of my career paths.”

“Sweet Celestia, THAT’S IT!” Iron Glamour shouted, pumping a wing in triumph.

“Quoi?” Winter asked, briefly dropping into Prench.

“You just said it!” Iron Glamour exclaimed, eyes alight with excitement. “We change their focus.”

“You want me… to use ballet as a domination tool?” the kirin asked, feeling out the idea herself. “Use it to change their focus from fighting, drinking and wild parties to…”

“To being ballet dancers,” finished the pegasus, nodding vigorously. “We change their core from battle, to ballet.”

“That… that actually might work,” Winter Showers said, rubbing her muzzle in thought. “It still wouldn’t be an instant process, and the ponies involved would have to be kept under strict control 24/7, at least until after their first ‘performances’, but it could be done. I’d have to close down my regular dance school though.”

“I’ve got unlimited funding and a writ for any equipment I want from the Crowns themselves,” Iron Glamour replied, waving a hoof at the mention of costs. “The question is, can you do it?”

“Change a pony at their core, by changing what they focus on? Yes, I can do that,” Winter Showers told her. “But, I can’t do it all. I can hold them. I can tame them, train them, change them into what’s needed, but doing so will take every minute of every day. Even with help.”

“Understood,” Iron Glamour said, nodding in understanding. “You handle things here and I’ll handle both target acquisition and resource requisition.”

“It seems we have a modus operandi then,” responded the kirin, using her magic to summon a pair of drinks for the mares. “Do we have a list of the ponies their Highnesses want dealt with?”

“Right here,” Iron Glamour replied, pulling the still sealed scroll from a saddlebag.

“May I?” Winter Showers asked, and after getting a nod of assent, broke the seal and unrolled the scroll.

“Oh… oh my,” were the first words out of Winter Showers mouth.

“Holy fucking shit,” breathed Iron Glamour. “These… these are some of the most powerful ponies in Equestria. Some of the closest ponies to the princesses.”

“Iron,” began Winter Showers, deliberating using her companions first name. “Are you absolutely sure that this is the correct list? That all of this isn’t some sort of ruse to go after these ponies on behalf of an enemy or to trick us into going after them illegally?”

“I’m pretty sure,” the pegasus began. “I mean, Raven Inkwell herself gave me—”

Cold night suddenly descended on the ballet studio, freezing both ponies in place.

“This list, and the commission you have received to act upon it is no ruse,” stated a cool voice with layers upon layers of power and authority woven into it. Both Winter Showers and Iron Glamour attempted to turn toward the voice that belonged to Princess Luna, only to find themselves frozen in place by sheathes of prussian blue power that coated their bodies.

“We were not here, and if you do not lay your eyes upon Our corporeal self you may still say that in truth,” said the voice. “As you have observed, the ponies on this list are both mighty and beloved by Ourselves and Our Sister. But as much as We love them and respect their strength on behalf of Equestria, their penchant for chaos and destruction rivals that of Discord himself.”

The magic released both the kirin and the pegasus.

“There comes a time when a stallion must be harnessed to the plow, and a wild mare bridled and brought to heel,” continued the cold voice. “We need the ponies on this list to be turned toward the good and away from their wild and rending courses. Even if they be warriors who rival my Sister in strength at arms. Even if they hold my heart in their hooves.”

“We charge thee with this duty, and leave behind a token of Our Grace to show Our intent,” concluded the voice, as an instant later light and warmth returned to the room.

Both ponies took their time before turning around, just to make sure that the Princess of the Night was no longer there, and while neither pony saw anything, the motion of Winter Showers’ head made something flash silver on her chest.

“Winter, you weren’t wearing a necklace before, were you?” Iron Glamour asked, squinting to catch the detail of a pendant hanging from a thin silver chain that hadn’t been there before.

“Neither were you,” was Winter Showers reply.

Hooves went down to chests, each lifting an identical silver medallion on a long and thin silver chain, and Iron Glamour’s eyes went wide as she saw what her medallion actually was.

“It’s pretty?” Winter asked, looking at her own necklace and medallion in confusion.

“It’s a lune,” Iron Glamour explained. “Before Nightmare Moon, Equestrian money was tied to both princesses. Golden ‘sols’ for Celestia and silver ‘lunes’ for Luna. After Nightmare Moon, Celestia gathered up every sol and lune she could find and melted them all down to create the ‘bit’ system for coinage.”

“So how, and more importantly why, are we wearing two of them,” Winter Showers asked.

“Celestia kept some sols separate, and that after Luna returned she unearthed her own hidden caches of lunes,” the pegasus continued. “According to the stories I’ve heard, any pony possessing one of these has the direct blessing and authority of the Princess who bestows it.”

“I do believe this adequately satisfies our concerns as to whether or not we are legitimately meant to do what we have been asked to,” Winter replied, letting the coin sink back onto her chest. “It will take me roughly a month to get things adequately prepared here for our first pony. Who do you believe that should be?”

Iron Glamour put her hoof onto the first name on the list and said, “I believe starting at the top is the best place to start.”

Author's Note

Welcome to a new commission story for Lady Lightning Strike.

Battle to Ballet will feature the conversion of several ponies from wild hellions intent on parties and mayhem into disciplined and focused ballet dancers. Expect bondage, bridles, fetish, taming/training and all sorts of interesting ways to convert a pony from one thing to another.

If you want to have priority status for any future commission you might have in mind, early peeks at my writing, help keep me in coffee and keyboards, or simply aid me in my quest to get to Everfree NorthWest next year, join my Patreon for as little as a dollar a month and you too can help a crazy writer keep on, keeping on.

Also, I've taken to streaming my attempts at gaming. Midnight to 2am Pacific Daylight Time, Saturday through Tuesday nights. Currently playing the Darkness Falls mod for 7 Days to Die.
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